


sixteen hours

by braigwen_s



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: (just the Thing in ep 6 it's fine we're fine what's a little trauma between siblings), Beifong Family Feels, Family Drama, Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm A Healer But, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Korrasami Foreshadowing, Missing Scene, Swearing, Unconsciousness, Whump, and yes that was about you sUYIN, in this house we stan actions having consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 15:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20048458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: You know the drill, toss a comment to your author.





	sixteen hours

“What are you two doing?” shouted Opal, the perfect vision of reproach, pushing both women back. Korra felt a pang of shame; she shouldn’t have left it to Su’s daughter to break this up. Ending blood feuds was in an Avatar’s job description, but not in a sheltered young airbender’s. “You’re sisters!” she continued, now pleading as much as scolding; “Why would you want to hurt each other?”

Suyin looked down, seemingly shamed, and Lin did as well – and began to topple completely. Korra made a leap onto the thin metal platform, speeding herself with a gust of wind, and got there just in time to stop her head slamming into it and her skull splitting.

She looked down at the pile of dusted, sweaty hair on her knees, trying to equate it in her mind with the brusque, capable woman who’d been a thorn in her hide her first few days in Republic City. That didn’t work very well, so she tried to equate it to the confused mess of a grump she’d seen not two hours before. That worked a lot better, but the issue then became equating that with the other image.

“What,” she said, out loud, “the fuck.”

There was another, gentler thump, and she looked up; Opal had run over and knelt beside her. Now there were two of them looking at Lin, doing nothing together.

Or there had been – Opal was making herself useful, taking Beifong’s limp wrist and holding two fingers to it, frowning. “She’s unconscious, but her heartrate’s super fast.”

“Should we – should somebody get a doctor?” asked Sr, who was looking nervously at Suyin.

“It’s alright,” said Korra, using a slow calm voice the way Katara had taught her, that didn’t represent the way she felt at all, “I’m a healer.” At least his words had jogged her from confusion into action. She’d always been better at _doing_ than _thinking_.

She uncorked the small skin hanging from her pelt and pulled the water out of it, resting it on Lin’s forehead and lighting it. “What’s happened to her?” asked Su – she was still out-of-breath, but the tremor in her voice was from concern or emotion.

Korra glared up at her (she’d crossed the bridge but not sat down). “A battle with one of the most dangerous creatures I’ve ever encountered – a younger sibling. Maybe if you let me work I can find out.” She realized she might’ve been overtly hostile, so she gritted her teeth and made an effort to explain. “You’re a Master of metalbending. I’m a Master of water healing.” She wasn’t sure what to think about Suyin, now. Or what to think about Lin. Or what to think about herself – how quick she’d been to take sides in something she clearly knew next to nothing about. Easier to do than to think, easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Easier to hurt than to heal, but at least with that Katara had taught her both.

She pushed the water around, more as a diagnostic tool than anything, discerning bruised ribs, strained and twisted muscles, a generous serving of old injuries that had recovered wrong or poorly. Wait, the remnants of a shattered ankle and dislocated knee? Did this woman never go to a doctor until damage was irreparable? Honestly, that … sounded about right – lacerations didn’t exactly tend to leave slabs of scar tissue like the ones on her face, though she’d never thought about that. There was a lot she'd never thought about, regarding Lin. And then there was no more water left, because aside from all of that, and a clouded lung that she would worry about later, Beifong was running a fever. A very high fever. High enough to evaporate a full waterskin in two minutes. Higher than a sky bison on cactus juice –

Well, you got the idea.

She looked over at Opal, and the younger woman met her eyes quickly before glancing away. She picked up the waterskin and tossed it to her. “Can you refill this for me?” She could have bent up water from the moat not three feet away, but she understood the need to feel useful.

She hastened to do so, placing the skin back in Korra’s waiting hand.

There was the sound of rapid footfalls, and Mako and Asami rounded the mansion’s corner together, skidding to a walk from sprinting. Several metal-armored guards trailed behind them, and the truthseer Aiwei brought up the rear.

Korra wondered how loud the fight had been, and when they’d realized something was happening.

Asami took in the scene, then brought a hand up to her mouth. Mako just froze to an utter stillness, as if he’d suddenly grown his father’s Earthbending roots. His detective’s eye swept Korra, and the children, then fixed, glaring, at Suyin.

His tone was hollow and pre-decided. It would have been accusatory, if judgement were accusation. “What happened to the Chief?”

“Aunt Lin attacked Mom and then Mom beat her –”

“Wei!” said Senior.

“She attacked me,” Suyin echoed with dignity.

“After Su goaded her,” said Korra.

“I see,” said Mako, a dangerous glint of sparks between his fingers, and his head tilted to the side, faux-lazily. He was prepping for a fight, and for once she didn’t want him to. “Does this duel go to seconds?” he asked.

Wei and Wing – as one unit, in perfect synchronization – began to shift into an Earthbending ready stance. “No!” snapped Korra and Opal together.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” said Opal, glaring at the twins, and Korra recalled that they’d been cheering after the first time their mother threw Lin to the ground. “There’s been enough family hurt today.”

They had the grace to stand down, hanging their heads and shrugging. Mako glared. “Korra, what’s really going on?”

“What Su said,” she admitted, “they argued, then they fought, then Opal broke it up, then she passed out right after. But that doesn't excuse anything. She could have killed her."

“I – pardon, how is that? Lin is an extremely skilled bender, if there’s something I don’t know about …”

“Something you should have, maybe, ma’am,” said Mako, the picture of calm professionalism, and Korra remembered once again he worked these things out for a living.

“She doesn’t like Zaofu,” agreed Asami, who’d rapidly recovered her wits and was now playing tag-team prosecution, “she’s not comfortable here. I haven’t pried, but if I had to I’d say textbook trauma reaction.” Asami was still living on Air Temple Island. She understood what places could do.

“To the point of physical illness,” said Mako, nodding to her in recognition. Suyin looked to Aiwei, wanting to know if they were being truthful – he nodded once, stiff and awkward, and Korra started laying out her evidence.

“I went to talk to her a few hours ago, and she looked really awful – all clutching her stomach and sweating and having to lean on things to walk. She seemed pretty out of it as well, I’m not even sure she knew who I was, at least to start with. She looked super surprised to see me, then she blinked and shook her head and did her usual –“ She approximated a “not you again, Avatar” glare, folding her arms. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been … doing the opposite of having breakfast … at breakfast time,” she finished awkwardly.

“Vomiting,” translated Mako, before Bolin could say anything. Opal, who’d moved to her side, all the better to look accusingly at her mother from, covered her mouth with her fingertips, distraught and maybe disgusted.

Su, also, looked stricken, her forehead creased in seemingly genuine worry. It disgusted Korra. “I didn’t know...”

“Yeah,” said Korra, “if you’d known she was sick you’d never have goaded her into a brutal, unscheduled duel with your children watching. You were looking for a fight all day, deny it, Aiwei’s your pet, he won’t tell us it’s a filthy lie –”

“Who’s looking for a fight now?” asked Opal softly, a hand brushing her shoulder, and Korra cut herself off with a huge effort.

“I’m sorry, sifu,” she said coolly. “I’ve overstepped my bounds as a healer.”

Suyin shrugged, her smile forced and ugly. “You’re not wrong, though.”

Korra turned back to her work, but soon turned back again - the state of her lung was worrying her more than she had wanted to admit to herself. Someone who did as much physical activity as Lin should definitely have better capacity. “This isn’t another accusation, I have to ask as procedure and I think you’re technically next of kin – do you know if she has any pre-existing medical conditions?”

“I don’t know,” said Suyin softly, looking at her hands, “I was just fourteen when I left Republic City, and she was nineteen. She was barely out of the Police Academy, and I didn’t – I wasn’t privy to medical details.” She looked up. “It’d be on her file, though – I don’t suppose Mako’s seen it?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t fancy getting fired from my first job away from the factories or Triads–”

“You were with the Triads?” She didn’t look shocked or disapproving, merely surprised and intrigued. Bolin folded his arms.

“He had to look after me,” he said, and she didn’t push the topic. Korra nudged the conversation back on track.

“I just asked because I had to, Su.” Her words brooked no compromise, but her tone was conciliatory – _no hard feelings?_

The elder woman nodded. “I understand... I’m just sorry I couldn’t help you.” _No hard feelings._

That was hostilities over for now, then. Still, the insistent part of Korra, the part that spoke with divine judgement and never backed away from a fight, wanted to ask if that was really all she was sorry for. Suyin frowned, suddenly shrewd. “Did you only ask me as procedure?”

Korra frowned right back, uncomfortable with the moral situation she found herself in. She looked to Opal, but she just shrugged helplessly, caught in the middle and likely wanting to know for herself. Okay, that was fair. “I can’t tell you that,” Korra said eventually.

“Hold on a minute,” said Asami, “you’re saying she was ill when the fight broke out, and Suyin fought her seriously while taunting? This means that the … matriarch? Of an Earth Kingdom city-state disregarded dueling conventions against a United Republic official. The Chief had better be okay, and not just because we care about her. If she isn’t, this could be war.”

Fuck. Korra hadn’t thought of that, but she was right. “She will be,” she said, much more firmly than she felt.

Aiwei looked right at her, and she hastily cast her eyes down. His nose wrinkled, like an animal sensing prey, and his golden jewelry shifted. “At any rate,” he said at length, “it was a family matter.”

Asami’s voice was shaking, all of a sudden. “So was my father telling me to kill my friends.”

And so was the mess with Unulaq, but she’d accidentally remade the world and now there were new Airbenders and she was in Zaofu to pick one up. “You really had to scare us all, huh?” murmured Korra, swirling the water around with both hands, “couldn’t just save that for Suyin. Drama queen. You had better be alright, or who else will pester me? Actually, that’s an idea. Maybe_ I_ should pester _you_ about your safety.”

She suddenly remembered the little audience, and, embarrassed she had actually been heard by someone, lowered her mutter into a passable imitation of Lin. “Reckless idiot, always picking a fight.”

Suddenly, as if offended, her breathing picked up, and she began to struggle feebly. Korra threw a hand out, restraining her, the other still coated and glowing –

She wasn’t waking, just tossing with fever. Refill the waterskin – she threw it over to Opal again.

“We should move her indoors,” said Korra, keeping her voice gentle but assertive the way Katara taught her to, “I don’t fancy sleeping rough unless I have to.” She’d done enough healing to know when it would be a long night.

“I – to her guestroom?” asked Suyin.

Korra nodded. “That should do. Opal and I could lift her using airbending, but really I’d prefer a manual carry – maybe the boys,” she said, nodding towards Mako and Bolin. Korra could have taken her herself, but she didn’t want to risk the swinging limbs and unsupported frame that came with a bridal or fireman’s carry. So she chose Bolin because he liked to help, Mako because, as much as he would deny it, he cared about his boss. She was probably the first decent one he’d ever had.

They nodded and squatted down by Korra and Lin, working out how best to lift her. Senior was now examining the wreckage, and his focus drew to a specific hunk of metal. “Huan, your sculpture was damaged!”

“It’s okay, Dad,” he said, “it’s actually now symbolic of the conflict to come out of Convergence.”

Opal hung her head, looking very troubled and very young. Bolin laid a hand on her shoulder. “None of this was your fault,” he said.

“It’s mine, if anyone’s,” said Korra. “I’m a _healer_, for La’s sake, but I stood here and watched.”

Suyin neither protested these self-accusations, nor joined in on them. The boys finally decided – Mako with Lin’s torso, Bolin with her legs – and they stood, Korra walking behind them. One of the twins jogged alongside her, kicking up dust. “Who’s La?”

“What?”

“You said you are ‘a healer, for La’s sake’.”

“Oh. La is the Spirit of the ocean.”

They deposited her, carefully, on the guestroom’s bed.

Mako ran a hand through his hair, and Bolin opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then Korra shooed them both away.

They’d just left when the door was knocked upon. “Can I stay for a little while?” asked Opal. She was peering around but not daring to enter, a strange mirror of the last evening.

Korra looked over at her, riding this new wave of shame and banishing it. “Sure.”

She stayed for about half an hour, then left as well. Beifong was tossing and turning regularly by that time, muttering and sometimes calling out, making no sense. Korra suspected Opal was frightened.

Refill the waterskin.

“You need to eat, Korra,” said Asami, folding her arms, “you’re no help if you get sick too.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know. I’ll have dinner in here. Thanks.”

Asami huffed but didn’t argue. “Do you want company?”

Korra looked up at her, touched. “It’s boring,” she cautioned, but accepted the offer. They chatted over three fine courses, Asami updating Korra on what she’d missed. Apparently Mako had chewed out Suyin further, both as a sibling – neither girl quite understood that part, but agreed that Bolin was probably nicer than Su – and as a fiercely loyal mentee. 

"He pointed out," said Asami, pointing her chopsticks at Korra's face, "what Su had said at breakfast, that Lin would be 'a horrible teacher'. And then he spent about five minutes listing off, like, two hundred things he'd learned from her. I've never seen him this kind of angry - he almost set the table on fire. It started smoking, and there's a scorch-mark."

"Wow, how'd Su take that?" 

"Bolin, ironically enough, calmed him down and smoothed things over. She was on the defensive the whole time, though, it was really quite something." During the duel, it had been Lin on the defensive, as soon as Su had first struck back. They'd been using the laws of a _real_ duel, not a friendly match where the first blood meant it was over. This, of course, only made the etiquette breach worse. _Fuck me_, thought Korra, _thought I was done with maybe starting wars_. She looked up and met Asami's gaze.

"Ironically because he's Mako's sibling, or, like... because he's Bolin?"

Asami held back a snort. "Well, I mean, I'm -"

Lin suddenly tossed so violently both girls feared she’d fall from the bed, and they dropped their plates and chatter in an instant. Asami helped to hold her down. Refill the waterskin. Then they washed their hands and finished eating.

“If I ever try and choose my own sifu again," she told Asami, once she dared to keep talking, around a spoonful of mousse, "please hit me… I don’t know why, but they always end up nearly killing their older siblings.”

"Will do," said Asami. After a few minutes, she took the plates and left as well. Korra settled in for that long night she'd predicted.

“’Nt ‘tara?”

_Aunt Katara – _

Korra blinked sudden tears from her eyes. “Shh,” she whispered, “it’s alright.” Had Katara called her ‘Lin’? Should she call her ‘Lin’? “It’s alright, hey, I’ve got you.”

“’s Mom here?”

Damnit, why did her delirious patients always have to break her heart wide open? Why did she never get the fun ones who thought walls were edible and bees were nesting in their hair (according to Katara, Sokka)? She bit her lip. “Not just yet,” she answered. Was Toph even still alive? 

The scars on her cheek, Korra noted, made for a shocking contrast up-close, at least now that her skin was pallid. "Su... why did Su... how c - could she -"

"Shh," said Korra, "shh." Now _there_ was a question that was lucid - or, at least, could be taken as such_. _Either way, Korra could only wish she knew the answer. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you, about this place," she whispered. "I'm sure you won't remember this, but ... you know what, I'll stop talking." Lin's eyes were half-open, and glassy like her mother's had been. Korra blinked and sat back. _It's fever, not cataracts, you stupid girl_, she told herself. The voice she imagined sounded sort of like Lin. It was probably the sneer in it.

The guard shift changed. Refill the waterskin.

About an hour past midnight, Lin’s fever finally broke. Korra, exhausted and relieved, gave the guards a stern instruction to fetch her if things got worse again, then headed to her own guest bedroom. Asami and Opal were talking intensely with the boys next door, but she was too tired to be bothered eavesdropping. Healing really wasn’t her forte.

Korra woke at mid-morning, and upon trudging through the door found that her friends had also risen late.

“Is Beifong alright?” she yawned, over their really-more-lunch-than-breakfast, and there was a silence. “Shit!” she said. “I told the guards to wake me if something happened –”

“Nothing happened,” said Asami.

“Probably,” said Bolin.

“The thing is,” said Mako.

“What?” said Korra. “What. Thing?”

"We don’t really know,” said Mako. “She hasn’t gotten up yet, and we weren’t about to break into the room, but –”

“Tui above,” Korra said, half a curse and half a prayer. Fuck, if she was properly unconscious – “We’re breaking into it,” she decided, “once I finish my cereal.” Nobody disagreed, which said a lot.

Actually, they knocked. And Lin opened the door and scared them all.

"You’re welcome,” Korra muttered after her, as Mako rubbed his nose where it had hit the floor. “And right, Mako, ‘asleep’, that’s totally believable. Who the hell sleeps for sixteen hours if they’re okay?”

“Bolin does,” said Mako, squinting. "Um, professional opinion?"

Korra, also, was still staring after Lin. "Either," she said slowly, "she has completely lost her mind, or she's completely found it. Don't ask me which, I have no clue."

And with that worrying thought, they exchanged a glance and tailed her. A few paces from the dining room, Opal caught up with them. “Is she okay now?” she asked worriedly, and Asami nodded. Bolin wobbled his hand.

“Seems well enough,” said Mako encouragingly, at the same time as Korra said:

“Definitely still delirious.”

Asami rolled her eyes, touching Opal’s shoulder as the girl looked between them in confusion. “Apparently these three are terrified of smiles.”

“To be fair,” said Mako, “it’s not exactly Chief’s habit.”

Opal giggled nervously. "I think I might've noticed that." Then her eyes moved to Korra. "Thank you, so so much. If I'd only just met my aunt and she... I don't know what I would've done. Or what my mom might've."

"It's what I'm there for," said Korra gently, although it definitely wasn't. She didn't say that Lin was never in danger, though, because she had a feeling that, in this city, lying for more than one sentence at a time would summon Aiwei. But she did smile. And nudge Asami, because Bolin was flushing beet.

**Author's Note:**

> You know the drill, toss a comment to your author.


End file.
